Tag Archives: Hilary Custance Green

Post navigation

I published a novel, Border Line, in December 2014. I had a party, a stall at the village Christmas Fair, a book-signing at the local farm shop café, I went to the main book shops in my city, plus a few smaller shops in nearby towns. The local paper and the city paper wrote about me and my third novel. I sold plenty of copies at these events and a respectable number (for me) of print and eBooks on Amazon.

eBook cover

And that was more or less it. To be honest, when I have finished writing a novel, I am ready to put it behind me. No book of the imagination ever reaches the original vision, so the fun is in building a new vision and having another crack at it. So, I didn’t blog, tweet or go on facebook with requests to buy Border Line (and I am not going to do so now). I got on with the next project.

This was the important task of getting my non-fiction book about Far East POWs published. This was a very different task – completed last year and published by Pen & Sword – though the research and the follow-up work goes on.

Yet now, as I return to the writing fiction at last, the old questions about what works and what doesn’t in my writing are hovering over me again. Add into this mix some interesting posts from other bloggers about positive and negative reviews, especially how useful negative reviews (see Tara Sparling’s post) are to readers.

So we come to my idea. I would like to give away (UK or Europe only) six copies of Border Line in return for critical reviews on Amazon or Goodreads – and I mean critical – I DO NOT MIND if this results in two-star reviews (or more or less). I am a perpetual student, knowing what does and doesn’t work, are both equally useful.

I already know, for instance, that the ending of Border Line splits readers. So I am looking for personal views, what you loved or hated, what niggled or irritated you. Why you would or wouldn’t recommend this book to other readers. One line would be good, five to ten would be even better, write an essay if you feel like it.

It is more than a month since I posted here. My three email inboxes are bulging and I still haven’t posted flyers for Surviving the Death Railway to friends and relatives on my mailing list… A week today on Thursday 28 July, I will be giving a lecture at The National Archives in Kew titled Writing to a Ghost: Far East POWs (by this time a week today it will be over!). But this is the first of five going into November.

At the two launches for my book many people sweetly offered the same theme, with variations: ‘You must be so proud, now you can relax.’ I am proud of the people in the book and very happy that others have been able to recognise their achievements now and yes, I’m pleased that I played a part in that. Relax? In my dreams.

In between these events I continue to attend the local Toastmasters Club, where I am learning to overcome my fear of public speaking. This is the warmest safest environment imaginable. Many bright young things, often giving speeches in their second language, as well as several of my own age – a very buzzy, happy, honest, international crowd – and that in spite of the nightmare of Brexit and many other world horrors. This provides a good reminder that the newspapers only tell us the bad stuff, there’s plenty of the other.

And, the hedgehog still attends nightly (looking a little anxious about being photographed). I even saw three of them one night. Of course the garden, a little neglected, will still be there when this caravan limps into a parking space. (These so-green photos were taken before the current heat wave!)

I have several posts in waiting, but no time for responding. Still, this I had to share. Uh? Apart from the weird price, my page on Amazon.co.uk shows only this cover of the print version, and shows it three times (some at normal prices), but does NOT show the internet-friendly ebook cover (you have to click through) . They also put books by Hilary Green (not me) on the same page. I have no idea if I have ever sold books because someone thought I was her, but I know she has had sales because someone thought she was me. Grrr.

When I can snatch time away from my desk, and the weather allows, I rush into the garden to wrestle with ivy – by far the most prolific plant in the garden. We are slowly replacing our fence (or rather experts will replace, we just do the destruction part). The need is urgent, we rather think this part dates back to the 1920s.

In case you want to know, even (niche) mainstream publishing means you spend your time at your desk organising publicity materials, mailing lists, launch parties and worrying about who you have forgotten in your acknowledgements.

Spring is coming.

Edit – I have just had an email from the Pen & Sword commissioning editor. He asked, among other things, if Tara, Katie and the team had been in touch [not yet]. There is marketing and promotion, but apparently nearer to the release date.More when this happens.

One October day I found myself, aged 52, standing on top of a telegraph pole. Below me the rest of my ‘team’, five youngsters half my age, two of them clinging to the free end of my safety harness, were urging me to jump. At eye level to my right, but way out of reach, dangled the bar of a trapeze.

I had a letter from the House of Lords. The writer thanked me for the copy of Border Line that I had sent “because we are debating the Assisted Suicide Bill…”, apologised for taking so long to read it, owing to so many other commitments, and gave me his/her comments on the book and the topic.

So far so very surprising and gratifying. BUT I did not, to my knowledge, send them a copy of Border Line. I did write to another member of the House of Lords, to ask them to support the Assisted Dying Bill currently making its way through parliament. I argued from personal experience for individual choice in end of life decisions. I didn’t mention my book – Border Line is fiction and only tangentially related to the topic.

Now memory is a funny thing and it is always possible that I had a whim, parcelled the book up and posted it to this person, and that I failed to record it on my list, or write a letter to go with it, and yet their letter implies that it arrived with at least a note from me. Curiouser and curiouser.

The letter is very generous and kind, and indeed it is astonishing that someone this busy should have read my novel and bothered to write and thank me. However there were also some jarring notes. The bill is for ‘Assisted Dying’, not, as they suggest, ‘Assisted Suicide’ – there is a difference. They interpreted comments made by Joanna Trollope about her own wishes not to be a nuisance in her old age and her preference for being able to choose assisted dying when her time came, as implying that people who had become a nuisance should be put away whether they wished it or not. This is a tricky area, but I believe it will be possible to draft legislation which allows those of us who have expressed a wish to be helped to die when that time comes, to do so, while also protecting anyone who wishes to stay alive as long as possible.

Progress on one front is always balanced by a lag on another. The sun only shines at erratic intervals in the UK, you need to get out there and get to work. In the last two weeks we have reduced this to this.

I have spread it round the garden and some parts are done (darling crocus – Blue Pearl).

Others are half done – the veg bed.

While others are hardly begun…

The DIY is still pending. If you think watching paint dry is boring, trying watching plaster…
And yet we have made progress in one room.

Post navigation

Surviving the Death Railway cover

Border Line: click image to order, or available from Heffers bookshop, Cambridge UK

Border Line eBook cover

Border Line

"Of course love is the ultimate luxury, but I am unwilling to continue in the certainty of its absence."
Grace is searching online for ways to die and she finds Daniel. Like a pied piper, he leads her and nine other people on a trek across Slovenia. For twenty-one days they share stories, play games, surprise themselves with laughter… and make their final decisions.
An intense love story told against the backcloth of the Slovenian landscape. It tackles contentious issues around suicide and assisted dying and yet remains uplifting.

Unseen Unsung: click image to buy

Unseen Unsung

Luca, a brilliant and self-absorbed young opera singer, is buried in the rubble of a collapsed building. A girl crawls through the debris to comfort him and then vanishes. Perhaps she died in the ruins or maybe she is just a figment of his imagination. When he discovers the strange truth, he is unwilling to accept it.
This is a story of love between two people who would never have met and never have found common ground without one of the catastrophes of modern life.
Unseen Unsung celebrates the power of music and the force of human survival in a complex world.

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.